Teacher Encourages Boy to Join Boys' Play, He Prefers Solitary Activities

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here. Our 5-year-old is struggling in his mixed-age classroom because it seems that during unstructured play time, the girls seem to huddle around and play, while the boys (led by the oldest boy in the class) run around, play cops and robbers, tackle each other, etc. My son comes home and says he wishes he had friends at this school like he did at his old school. When I encourage him to play with/talk to other kids, he says, “But I don’t like to play like that, so they said they don’t want to play with me, and the girls told me we are each other’s best friends, and they always huddle together and talk in the corner.” The teacher says that he doesn’t mix with the other kids and stays on the sidelines. According to the teacher, he seems happy to be alone and sings by himself. She says she encourages him to join the boys, but he says he doesn’t like to play cops and robbers. What I gather is that he is very social, he does want to play, but he is struggling because his interests are not typical for his gender, and the kids seem to separate into gender specific cliques. I take him to the library, and he easily talks to children in the play area there and puts together a puppet show with random kids we met there. He doesn’t seem to be shy about approaching for play when the type of play interests him. We tried to enroll him in soccer. He explicitly told us he didn’t like it, so we stopped after one season. He doesn’t like to play catch, shoot a basketball, or do anything to do with a ball. He rides his bike, swims, reads above his age level, does puzzles and Legos, etc. He does not like running around or being tackled and has explicitly told us that. How do I help him navigate school and boyhood? His personality is similar to mine, but I, as a woman/girl, did not face this. It might feel like a problem that your son doesn’t like to play with the kids in his class right now. But this doesn’t strike me as a huge issue right now. After all, around 5 years old is when kids really begin to respond to society’s gender biases: For example, boys, knowing they’ll be praised for displaying strength, might lean into the roughhousing your son dislikes. As the kids in your son’s class get a little older, there will be fewer “boy activities” and “girl activities.” Reading, for example, will be normalized for everyone. But for now, your son’s social life has to be driven by groups and institutions that exist outside of the classroom. Since he loves the library, look for a kids’  book club, which are popping up more and more now, and “storytimes.” There are also groups of people of all ages that do puzzles, and Legos are so popular that they appeal to all genders and even all ages. If you live in a warm-weather area or have access to an indoor pool, swim! Your son just has to find his people. While it would be amazing if the kids in his class were a perfect match, they aren’t right now. There’s still hope that they will be one day, but you don’t have to wait. There are plenty of friends out there for the making. Just set your son up to be in those places, and he’ll find them. Get parenting and family advice—submit a question! Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don‘t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Thanks! Your question has been submitted. My daughter, who is 6, walked to her best friend’s house, but when she got there, she realized that she’d worn her plain school shoes instead of her new sparkly pink ones. She burst into hysterical tears, and I had to come over and calm her down. And then I had to convince her to just walk back to our house and get her shoes because we only live one house down! I swear we spent more time on this than she actually spent playing with her friend. Every disappointment or delay is an enormous disaster that can never be fixed. I feel like I’m constantly lurching from one tiny crisis to another, and it’s exhausting. She’s surrounded by family, teachers, and TV shows that say, “It’s OK to try again! Mistakes happen! Just get a towel for that spilled milk!” How do you teach kids problem-solving and perspective? All the parenting advice says to just model the positive behavior you want, and they’ll learn, but when does the learning actually happen? —Bandit Heeler Never Has to Deal With This Dear Bandit Heeler Never Has to Deal With This, As much as we hope that kids can bounce back from disappointment, those issues that seem small to us can feel so large to them. Those sparkly shoes she’s been thinking about wearing to her best friend’s house are a big deal to her! The biggest deal. So as our kids grow, our job is to just continue to help them learn to regulate their emotions when these “crises” happen. Validate her feelings, which it seems you’re doing, and then help give her the words to express how she feels. “Have you been thinking about wearing those sparkly shoes all day? That’s disappointing, and you can tell me when you’re disappointed in something not going well.” Work on solutions to help her calm down. Breathing exercises to help her stop crying or placing her hand on her heart until it slows down are some quick and easy tips she can use anywhere. (The hand on the heart is one I use myself when I’m really going through it!) That’s where the learning and growth come from. The disappointment doesn’t necessarily stop coming for us, but we get better at the rebound. We Want to Hear Your Petty Work Drama! Laura Helmuth and Doree Shafrir want to help you navigate your social dynamics at work. Does your colleague constantly bug you after hours? Has an ill-advised work romance gone awry? Ask us your question here! My 8-year-old daughter has struggled with anxiety-related sleep disruptions for the past few years. This began as night terrors, then sleepwalking, and now anxiety attacks at bedtime that can go on for hours. I know that a consistent routine is key, and we’re doing all the things to promote good sleep: limiting screen time before bed, a relaxing bath or shower, books, white noise, and a dim nightlight. Nevertheless, about once a week (sometimes more often if there’s some external stressor—a parent traveling for work, for instance), she starts to cry the minute we say goodnight and gets more and more agitated and upset. The challenge is that once she’s gotten started, nothing works: having her move to another room (she shares a room with her 5-year-old sister) to read or write in a journal, a parent staying in the room, walking her through visualization techniques, or giving her melatonin. She’s seen the school counselor a few times, who’s recommended all the same things—again, to no avail. She will eventually fall asleep on her own, but often hours after bedtime. In addition to deeply wanting to help her, I also find myself growing more frustrated and resentful because she just doesn’t seem to want to calm down. If anything, she seems determined to get herself worked up and to stay that way. Is it time for private therapy (which we can luckily afford)? Leaving her to cry herself to sleep goes against all my mama instincts, but I actually think it would help her more than this game of musical beds. —I Can’t Fall Asleep for Her Dear I Can’t Fall Asleep for Her, Something is wrong with your sweet girl that she might not know how to express. It sounds like you’re doing all the traditional things most of us would advise: the nighttime routine, limiting screen time, solitude when needed, visualization. There’s something else going on here. Think about when your girls were babies and couldn’t talk. It sounds like when they had fussy nights—as all babies do—you didn’t let them cry it out because you knew something was bothering them that they couldn’t express. In the same vein, there’s something here that’s really bothering your daughter. It absolutely is time for private therapy. A professional can help your daughter get out what’s bothering her that she can’t currently express. Anxiety is hard to deal with as an adult! I can only imagine how tough it is to handle as a kid. So, not only can a therapist set her up for success now, but that person would also give her tips for handling her anxiety as she continues to grow. It’s worth pulling in all the help you can get so that your whole family can get the rest you all need to be healthy and productive. I’m a childfree woman whose social circle includes close friends and family members who are parents. I love my “nieces and nephews” and enjoy spending quality time with them at their homes or at gatherings where everyone mingles (backyard cookouts, etc.).I text with them and I buy them thoughtful, generous gifts for birthdays and holidays. One thing I do not want to do is go to their sporting events. They’re often more than an hour away and out in the cold or heat, depending on the season. Back when I was a kid playing sports, even my own parents rarely came to my games (and I truly didn’t care, as this was more normal back then).